Steve Foss, Senior Pastor, First Baptist Church Sun Lakes

Living in an attitude of thankfulness is a personal discipline requiring concerted, intentional effort that recognizes we neither own nor are proprietors of any real resource.

Think about it: Our water, electricity, propane, natural gas, food, clothing, etc., all come from sources which we have come to rely on for sustaining our way of life. Even when we take a night out on the town, the beverages, air conditioning, music, and service all come from outside our personal effort. Isn’t it only right that developing an attitude of thankfulness will only make your perspective more realistically aligned with the truth of the matter?

Gratitude affects one’s perspective:

• It can be humbling to realize that all you have was not received or achieved out of one’s own resourcefulness, skill, or even hard work. A farmer may work quite hard in hopes of harvesting a fine crop, only for it to end in failure due to some blight, weather, fire, etc.

• It can bring one into the reality of just how much we depend on others, especially as we age.

• It can offer a new discipline for one to shape and sharpen, which thereby offers to another the value of their work, their calling, their efforts in supplying your needs.

• It can create within one a new understanding of others—perhaps their unseen work or unnoticed commitment to excellence, etc.

• It can give one an entirely new understanding of oneself and the social habits one may have acquired which need to be re-evaluated or even discarded to make room for new habits of thankfulness.

Try it out … try living in gratitude: Thanksliving—it just may start a revolution of societal change.

“… in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (1 Thessalonians 5:18)